Google has decided to not only withhold support for FF2, Sea Monkey, Opera,and even Chrome 3 to force it's agenda on us but it is their stated policy that any document you store on their site can be used for basically anything they wish. That is criminal,few will ever read that statement.

The browser problem is particularly disheartening to people who do not have access to broadband and rely on these older browsers and people like Scottman who work hard to customize them for Puppy.

I think you need to go back and re-read what they are doing.

They are not discriminating against people who do not have broadband. They are discriminating against older browsers that do not support current web standards. And their drop of support is for Google Docs and Google Sites, not GMail (which was the initial complaint you made in a different thread.) They not that long ago re-architected their code so IE 6 would be fully supported by GMail. (I don't envy them that effort. IE 6 is the least standards compliant browser in popular use, and web devs tear their hair trying to get stuff to work in IE 6 that works in everything else.)

A lot of what Google is trying to do in Docs and Sites requires support for current standards in HTML CSS, and JavaScript to work at all. The browsers on their drop list lack the required support. (And note that v3 of their own Chrome browser is among the affected.)

I use GMail as my primary email, and make use of both Google Docs and Google Sites. I don't have a problem with their policies. For instance, I've never considered email secure, from any provider, so I don't generally say things in email I'd be unhappy about having made public. Sure, Google can theoretically read my mail. Let them. I don't care. (If it's that private, that's what GPG is for.) The stuff in Google Docs and Sites is there specifically to permit others to access it as well as me.

I normally access GMail from Windows on my desktop. On Puppy, I often use Basic HTML view, because the old, slow box I run Puppy on has problems with the AJAX stuff used in GMail, and I see "A script on this page is running slowly or has stopped responding. Do you want to terminate the script?" messages. The machine just can't process it fast enough. Basic HTML doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the AJAX version, but works fine for reading/replying to mail.

Folks still on dial up are at a disadvantage, because an increasing amount of stuff on line assumes you have broadband and the bandwidth to properly view things like streaming video, but this is hardly Google's fault. The days are long gone when web devs had to assume their users were at the other end of a 14,4KB modem, and had to code for small pages with a minimum downloaded to be able to view the page. The majority of the market has broadband these days, and development is aimed at that majority.
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Dennis

I can think of a 2 letter abbreviation for cattle poop that describes Google's reply.
If they wanted to make it clear why not just state Google will never do anything with your files, including look at them without your expressed written permission.
The line they need this blanket permission to reproduce files you gave others permission to access is nonsense.

The one thing I hate about GMail is your forbidden to send archives and .exe files . but its better then Not So Hot Mail and BooHoo (yahoo) Mail, they and ebay are very evil read here:
BooHoo: http://www.netdisaster.com/desktop/faq/yahoo_incident.html
EvilBay: http://www.netdisaster.com/desktop/faq/phishing.html

You can send archives, as long as they're Zip files. You can't send executables, even in Zip files, and this is my biggest annoyance with GMail, especially since they don't document what they consider executable. (I had an archive of HTML and PNG files bounced, apparently because it was theoretically possible to open the archive, click on an HTML file, and run it in a browser.)

Lack of support for archive formats other than Zip may bite them abroad, where things like RAR files are more common. (Public domain C source to open and extract RAR files was posted by RAR's author back in the MS-DOS days, and I understand he offered to help GMail integrate RAR support in GMail but was turned down.)

I maintain a Yahoo mail account precisely for the cases where I need to send or receive executables. I can send them via GMail, but it's a PITA for me and the recipient, as it requires tedious renaming of the contents.

For normal mail, GMail is the best I've seen. I have 7.5GB of storage and counting, and don't worry about my Inbox filling up and mail bouncing if I can't check is for a couple of days (which happened on my ISP POP account). The mail is on GMail's servers, not my system, and checkable from wherever I have an internet connection.

While I can have GMail deliver mail by POP and download and read it in an email client, I prefer the web interface. GMail's spam filters are the best I've seen. (I know folks who get mail via POP who forward everything through GMail to filter it, first.)

I can have GMail check my other accounts, and have everything show up in the GMail Inbox. I can optionally label mail from other accounts to identify it (I don't) and set things up so replies I make appear to come from the account the mail was sent to (I do.)

GMail provides a layer of security because potentially harmful attachments never reach my machine. They're on GMail's servers, and don't reach my machines unless I explicitly download them (and I know what it is and who it's from before I do so.)

And I'm on an assortment of mailing lists (and moderate a couple), and GMail's "Conversation Mode" is just made for list traffic.

Inability to send executables and lack of support for archives other than Zip are my only real GMail complaints.
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Dennis

I've never tried to send executables so I'm not sure about that. This is another company that you're not sure where the money's coming from, but if you don't want Google handling your email, GMX is an excellent alternative.

The main drawback is their webmail rejects you if you're not using Firefox, IE, Safari, or Chrome - I've had no luck with user-agent spoofing either.

I've never tried to send executables so I'm not sure about that. This is another company that you're not sure where the money's coming from, but if you don't want Google handling your email, GMX is an excellent alternative.

You can find out where the money comes from. It's a subsidiary of United Internet Group, which is publicly listed and claims a market cap of $2.5 billion. The question is how they expect to monetize GMX Mail (and rest assured, they will want to at some point. Publicly held companies do not offer free services out of the goodness of their hearts.)

I am amused by their selling point of not scanning mail for ad purposes. I could turn of the display of text ads in GMail. It's an easy hack. I don't because they are sometimes relevant and often whimsical when not. GMail can scan my mail to provide referents for ads all it wants. I don't care.
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Dennis

Lo, Google have opened the spreadsheet and determined what it is and placed it in Google docs for all.

How do I know? They damn well sent me a mail telling me so !!! Down to detail!!

Can you reproduce the email here? (minus embedded URL)

Was it made a Google Doc shared between the developers passing stuff back and forth, or the general public?

Were you able to delete it after Google had done that?

I use Google Docs, and options when creating them let me control who sees them. I can make them public to everyone, but that's not the default. And I can publish as a web page and provide a link, but the URL Google generates is not something people will just happen upon. I need to explicitly share it.

Quote:

Now if that doesn't worry you regarding Google nothing will.

It doesn't worry me because nothing I have in GMail or in Google Docs is all that private. I don't consider email secure, from Google or anyone else, and don't generally place secure information in email. (If I need security, that's what Public Key Encryption using GPG is for.)

How worried I'd be about what you describe would depend on circumstances.

It sounds like the kind of thing I'd have made a Google Spreadsheet to begin with, as the whole point of Google Docs is collaboration between groups of people. I have Google Spreadsheets up where multiple people have commit access, precisely because it's easier to work on a shared copy than pass multiple attachments about in email. (And it avoids the "not working on the current draft" issue.)

Offhand, it sounds like Google thought it was doing you a favor.
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Dennis

After some checking I've found Googles reason for posting the sheet to Google docs.

It's fairly benign BUT I still don't care for Googles further intrusion, I didn't ask Google to do this.

It seems one of the party couldn't be bothered to start their spreadsheet app and so opened it in Google spreadsheet online.

By doing so this triggered Google to place a copy in Google docs.

As far as I can tell, it's only available for the original few, hence Googles block email to the users concerned. I agree with you, I think Google thought it was doing us a favour.

This is not sensitive information as far as we are concerned but leads me to question what if it had been. I'm not happy of any automated process acting on any of my information, whether email or not.

I'm a bit stuck between the devil and the deep blue here, I have had personal email addresses supplied by my ISPs both now and previously. However the original ISP's are now defunct and the new ISP mail address is a pain.

So I plumped for Gmail originally to keep one address, but obviously Google have since 'grown up' and now want to change its operations, meaning it is now more 'complex' shall we say to stay simple. (Bit of a paradox there)

I did have a GMX mail address but lost the password and since haven't been back. Maybe it's time to look again._________________Rob
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The moment after you press "Post" is the moment you actually see the typso

After some checking I've found Googles reason for posting the sheet to Google docs.

It's fairly benign BUT I still don't care for Googles further intrusion, I didn't ask Google to do this.

It seems one of the party couldn't be bothered to start their spreadsheet app and so opened it in Google spreadsheet online.

By doing so this triggered Google to place a copy in Google docs.

No, you didn't ask for Google to do it. One of your developers did. Stuff like that is what Google Spreadsheets are for. It's what I would have done to begin with.

Quote:

As far as I can tell, it's only available for the original few, hence Googles block email to the users concerned. I agree with you, I think Google thought it was doing us a favour.

It was doing you a favor. The fact it's a favor you didn't ask for doesn't make it not one.

Quote:

This is not sensitive information as far as we are concerned but leads me to question what if it had been. I'm not happy of any automated process acting on any of my information, whether email or not.

It didn't happen because of an automated process. It happened because a human being specifically caused it to happen, as you recounted above. (And I'd be willing to bet that your developer not only opened the document as a Google Spreadsheet, but shared it with the others in the group to save them all some trouble. I would not be upset about it. That sort of concern for productivity and effective sharing of information on the part of my employees would be what I'd want.)

If it is sensitive information, it's on you as the manager to make policy governing how it is shared and distributed, and clearly communicate that to your people. This will be true regardless of how the information might be distributed, electronically or on paper, and has nothing to do with Google or any other service provider.

Quote:

I'm a bit stuck between the devil and the deep blue here, I have had personal email addresses supplied by my ISPs both now and previously. However the original ISP's are now defunct and the new ISP mail address is a pain.

So I plumped for Gmail originally to keep one address, but obviously Google have since 'grown up' and now want to change its operations, meaning it is now more 'complex' shall we say to stay simple. (Bit of a paradox there)

I use GMail as my primary email address for reasons like that. GMail can check my other accounts, so I see everything in one place. Replies I create appear to come from the address the mail was sent to, so it's not obvious GMail is even in the mix.

As mentioned elsewhere, my one complaint with GMail is the "no executables in attachments" policy. I sometimes need to send or receive such things, so I maintain a Yahoo account to handle those cases.

Other than that, it's fine.

I don't care if Google reads my mail, because as mentioned, I don't consider email secure, and don't put things in plain text I might have heartburn about becoming public. (Public Key Encryption is a beautiful thing.)

And in any case, human beings don't read it. (Why on earth would they bother without a court order telling them to? I am one random user among millions, with nothing to single me out for attention.) It's read by scan routines that try to extract key words/phrases, the better to present text ads targeted at my interests. Fine by me. I could stop them from displaying with a snippet or two of CSS, but don't bother. They are sometimes relevant, sometimes simply whimsical, and always unobtrusive.

I don't have a problem with GMail scanning my mail to present ads. Like everyone else, I buy goods and services, and ads are one way I find out about stuff I might want to buy. I want advertising targeted to my needs and interests, to reduce the amount I must wade through to find stuff I need. The more the advertiser knows about what I need, the better a job they'll do of offering stuff I want. (And I can say "no" just fine, thank you.)

Quote:

I did have a GMX mail address but lost the password and since haven't been back. Maybe it's time to look again.

They are not discriminating against people who do not have broadband. They are discriminating against older browsers that do not support current web standards. And their drop of support is for Google Docs and Google Sites, not GMail (which was the initial complaint you made in a different thread.) They not that long ago re-architected their code so IE 6 would be fully supported by GMail. (I don't envy them that effort. IE 6 is the least standards compliant browser in popular use, and web devs tear their hair trying to get stuff to work in IE 6 that works in everything else.)

Before you start complaining about my reading comprehension read everything I said. I made it clear I do not know if this will affect gmail and that I have become dependent on Google Docs, I even asked for a suggestion on an inexpensive alternative.

And yes it does discriminate against those without broadband, you can't access these new features with basic html and I can't use their standard view, it times out on dialup. If they remove the basic html option in Gmail, which I think likely to occur, I will have to get a new email service as well. Try dialing in to Gmail on dialup and see what happens
. It is not that hard to offer an alternative view that would work even with a text only browser, That would be much faster on dialup than even basic.

Quote:

A lot of what Google is trying to do in Docs and Sites requires support for current standards in HTML CSS, and JavaScript to work at all. The browsers on their drop list lack the required support. (And note that v3 of their own Chrome browser is among the affected.)

I realize that you can't offer all the bells and whistles on a simple page but the ability to store documents online is the main concern I have and even plain Gmail lets you open any document in html, if that is the limit of what they can do without the new system so be it. It works now so you can't tell me they can't still do it. Lots of sites use to offer a text only option . I can always download the file and open it with Textmaker 2010 or online with one of the online office suites.

Quote:

I use GMail as my primary email, and make use of both Google Docs and Google Sites. I don't have a problem with their policies. For instance, I've never considered email secure, from any provider, so I don't generally say things in email I'd be unhappy about having made public. Sure, Google can theoretically read my mail. Let them. I don't care. (If it's that private, that's what GPG is for.) The stuff in Google Docs and Sites is there specifically to permit others to access it as well as me.

I don't think you read two words I wrote. I have stated that anyone who thinks email is secure is dead wrong but we are talking about Google Docs on the security issue. What if Carbonite said they can do as they please with your backups, including publishing them for their own gain .
With the way it is written, according to an attorney who specializes in contracts ,they could sell your company secrets or your personal files and you let them do it.

Maybe you should ask yourself why you can choose to make files publib or not in Google Docs but not choose to ban Google from reading them, publishing them, or giving them away? I don't think you have really thought this out, maybe you don't have any private documents but some of us do, I certainly would never put them on Gmail now.
I will give you an example, I use to keep my customer records on Google Docs so I would always have access to them as well as proprietary software from several companies I represent.
There is nothing I do I am ashamed of online but you are suggesting in a not so vague way that I do and that I am so clueless about reality I think email is secure.

Quote:

I normally access GMail from Windows on my desktop. On Puppy, I often use Basic HTML view, because the old, slow box I run Puppy on has problems with the AJAX stuff used in GMail, and I see "A script on this page is running slowly or has stopped responding. Do you want to terminate the script?" messages. The machine just can't process it fast enough. Basic HTML doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the AJAX version, but works fine for reading/replying to mail.

Why should I bother responding? I can't make the argument any better than that. Allowing basic html is supporting older browsers.

Quote:

Folks still on dial up are at a disadvantage, because an increasing amount of stuff on line assumes you have broadband and the bandwidth to properly view things like streaming video, but this is hardly Google's fault. The days are long gone when web devs had to assume their users were at the other end of a 14,4KB modem, and had to code for small pages with a minimum downloaded to be able to view the page. The majority of the market has broadband these days, and development is aimed at that majority.

Lets be honest, they don't assume everyone has BB, they just don't care. The assumption may be that people on dialup have no money to spend, that millions still use it is a well known fact. That they have no money is a stupid assumption.
The minority is very significant. Compared to the percentage that use Linux vs Windows it is huge. Please never complain about a company dismissing Linux users, that would make you a hypocrite.
For your information the latest statistics I could find on the number of people who have access to broadband in the US, which includes those who log in at the library , school , etc. is 70%. Even if this figure is not grossly inflated by the nonsense of including libraries and schools in the estimate it leaves way over 80 MILLION people on dialup.

Hell of a minority in my book. I would like to have a dime from each one.
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Dennis[/quote]

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